Last Movies comes to the Watershed

What would you choose as your deathbed movie?

Personally, I wouldn’t be bothered with any of those solemn films that routinely appear on Movies You Must See Before You Die lists. Much as I was impressed by all five-and-a-half hours of Abel Ganz’s Napoleon, I’m not sure I’d want to slog through it all again while waiting to croak. I’d go for a classic comedy, because they’re always under-appreciated by compilers of those all-time lists and yet give repeated pleasure. Maybe Airplane!, Withnail and I, This Is Spinal Tap, an early Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein), the Naked Gun trilogy, Mike Judge’s overlooked, Trump-anticipating Idiocracy, or Sleeper – as a parting act of solidarity with the unfairly cancelled Woody Allen, who’s never been convicted of anything. Nope, actually, if I’m about to meet my non-existent maker, I’ll go for Monty Python’s Life of Brian – everything you need to know about religious belief and its adherents in 94 perfectly formed minutes.

Of course, the point is that most of us won’t get a choice. That’s the idea behind Stanley Schtinter’s intriguing book Last Movies, published by Bristol-based independent Tenement Press. Schtinter set about compiling a list of the films notable cultural figures watched just before they croaked. As you might expect, it’s a pretty random selection. Elvis Presley hired a cinema to watch the Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me in the weeks before his demise. Franz Kafka’s last movie was Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid. In what might be interpreted as a real life twist on What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Bette Davis shuffled off this mortal coil after watching herself in the 1931 version of Waterloo Bridge.

This month, Schtinter is coming to Bristol for a season of last movies at the Watershed, presenting some of them in person and supplying video introductions to others. “Last movies often aren’t intentional; they’re largely incidental and coloured with meaning only after the watcher takes their last breath,” says Watershed programmer Steph Read. “Despite this, Schtinter’s list of figures and their final films is one that invites speculation. And speculate he does. You find yourself spotting patterns and strange connections in an effort to rationalise the randomness of what’s essentially a circumstance of fate. I was really drawn to the project, and for me it was an enticing conceit for a season of films – one where the only qualifying criteria is chance. It’s a neat subversion of traditional approaches to programming.”

The Last Movies are showing every Sunday throughout March. Go here for tickets. Here’s the programme in full:

From Russia With Love followed by the first 15 mins of War is Hell

Sunday 3 March

The last films of JFK and Harvey Lee Oswald respectively. Preceded by an in-person introduction by Stanley Schtinter.

The Piano

Sunday 10 March

The last film watched by Kurt Cobain. Preceded by an in-person introduction by Stanley Schtinter.

The Sound of Music

Sunday 17 March

The last film of Joseph Breen, the administrator employed to enforce the US Hays Code of self-censorship between 1934 and 1954. Preceded by an in-person introduction by Stanley Schtinter.

Barry Lyndon, preceded by trailer for Eyes Wide Shut

Sunday 24 March

Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon was the last film watched by Charlie Chaplin. The trailer for his own Eyes Wide Shut was the last thing Kubrick himself watched.

Oedipus Rex

Sunday 31 March

Pasolini’s Freudian take on Sophocles’ ancient Greek tragedy was the last film the director watched before his murder on a beach in Ostia.

In addition, Stanley Schtinter will be talking about his project at a special event at Bookhaus on Wapping Wharf on Friday 8 March. Go here for tickets.

“If the Last Movies publication and project represents an alternative navigation of the first century of cinema, then this season at Watershed offers up five key waypoints along that trail,” adds Steph. “From the eerie significance of Cobain’s last theatre trip to the conspiracy-rich reverberations of JFK’s final Bond flick, this is a programme that anchors lives to films, and films to lives.”

Main image: From Russia With Love – Park Circus